


Post Expulsion

by stripeysheepsocks



Series: Dendritica [1]
Category: immunology - Fandom
Genre: Biology, Science, immunology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26128363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stripeysheepsocks/pseuds/stripeysheepsocks
Summary: A lymph new to the road sees an ending right off the bat.
Series: Dendritica [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897240





	Post Expulsion

She saw her first death early after expulsion.  
Everything was still quite new and exciting, but she had started to lag a little bit in her enthusiastic march down the closest road, and as the road widened and joined with other pathways and became a proper road with dozens of people on it in any stretch, she started to get a little bit fatigued. She fell in behind a few travelers who were traveling a little slower. She saw that one of them, out in front of the group, was weaving more than the usual traveler and was hunched over in a way that she hadn't seen before. However, as she looked around, she saw there were a few other travelers who bore the same signs of age. Everyone in the creche was fairly young, and she hadn't had the opportunity to see what "old" looked like, aside from the architects who didn't really count. They were first of all so deeply embedded in their planning rooms, surrounded by practically acres of marble, that you had to be really interested in talking to them, and then if you got there, all an architect really wanted to talk about was shear forces and tension strength. This was not only boring, but generally sounded completely nonsensical. Plus the architects appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, completely immortal.   
This traveler looked far, far from immortal. He was not just weaving, but stumbling, and throughout the day as Benita followed them, she saw him slow more and more. The rest of the travelers in his party were treating him slightly more carefully than they would a stranger, but she could see that they were getting impatient and she imagined they wanted to be on their way.   
The then evening pulse came, and there was a vast rush as the wind picked up. Many travelers began running, laughing as the wind temporarily lightened their loads and then it happened; the old traveler stumbled, tripped, and fell. Benita was nearly upon him before she could stop, and she heaved him up and, stumbling herself, helped him to the edge of the road. There was a tiny nook where she was able to lodge them both, while the faster foot traffic of the road continued to rush past. A few travelers pushed to the outer edges of the road swore as they tripped over the old man's outstretched feet, but for the most part they were left alone.  
"Are you, um, okay?" Benita asked.   
The old man mumbled something, something about oxygen and dioxide and walls closing in. He put a hand inside his jacket and fished around, coming out with a small glowing sphere of oxygen. It made his hand glow red around it, but as he pushed it at Benita and she took it into her hand, it flashed white. She held it for a moment, but he murmured, "take it...as thanks..."  
She slowly brought it to her mouth, and tasted briefly the bright sparkle that was life and living. It was ironic that so bright a thing should be given her by this decrepit old traveler; it tasted different from the oxygen she'd taken earlier, more bittersweet. She continued to hold the old man, while he panted out his last breaths. She searched the passing crowds, looking for someone who could help, anyone. Then, there, wading head and shoulders over the general mass, was a macro. Not an insipid little thing like the macros from the creche, who were too young to have come to their full size; this one was strong and broad and tall, and she called to him, even as the old traveler in her arms pushed something else into her hands. It was a flare. Not one of the great viciously bright flares that would be used in the case of an attack, nothing that would attract the attention of a neutro. This one, as she struck it, burned a calm quiet green, and she felt peaceful, suddenly, a strange sort of resignation that knew that waiting was the only option now. She sneezed and some of the sense of resignation left her, leaving only the smokey smell of the flare. 

The macro smelled the flare, and nodded to himself. He looked around and to his surprise, the traveler who had summoned him was all the way over by the wall; often the macro had to race to catch up with some fallen traveler tumbling in the heaving crowd and then break the current until he could do what he had to do. He easily broke his way through the crowd and saw there was a lymphocyte sentinel helping keep the traveler partially upright at the wall. He towered over them, and looked over the old traveler and the young, frightened lymph, so new out of the creche she still had her hair in a smooth part, not knotted up to keep out of the way or bedecked with beads and fetishes. She stared up at him, and he felt pity, tinged with a little bit of irritation.  
"This is not your place, little lymphocyte," he said, not unkindly.   
"I didn't know what to do," she murmured, shamefaced. "This was never part of my training."  
"That is because this is not a thing you do. Not a thing you will ever do."  
The macro bent over them, and sniffed at the old traveler. Yes, the old man had the right of it. Time to be done.   
"Stand back, little lymphocyte," the macro said. Benita saw with some apprehension that the travelers, who hadn't minded jogging her and the old man, were now giving the macro a wide berth. She complied.  
The macro bent over the old man and began to morph. There was a faint noise like the tinkling of broken glass and then the macro shifted between forms so fast Benita did not see what had happened exactly, but the old man was gone. The macro turned back toward her. She recoiled, for he had the old man's face, just for an instant, and then he was back to the macro she had seen at first.  
"Where do you go from here?" he asked her.  
"I...was heading toward...the acid lake," she said, gradually regaining her aplomb. "At least trying to. Do you know where it lies from here?"  
He turned ponderously, looking back the way they had come. Her heart sank. Then he turned back the otherway, the downhill way, and pointed. "Continue as you were," he said. "And when you start to smell alchemical fumes, you know you are there."

She thanked him and hurried on her way, unencumbered of dying travelers. He called after her, "Next time you encounter and aged one, merely light the flare, and one of us will be along presently. You understand? You need not wait."  
She waved one hand in recognition of his words.


End file.
